


Soulmate AU: Cafe

by headlesshorsepossum



Series: Soulmate AU(s) [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blood and Gore, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Suicide Attempt, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:33:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25267657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlesshorsepossum/pseuds/headlesshorsepossum
Summary: An AU of my work The Cafe, At The End Of The World where people are born with mark(s) representing their soulmate(s), through which they can feel their soulmates' emotions and pain.Basically a fix-it fic; what if the apocalypse trio could be there for each other at the darkest moments of their lives?
Series: Soulmate AU(s) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830571





	Soulmate AU: Cafe

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Cafe, At The End Of The World](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23436619) by [headlesshorsepossum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlesshorsepossum/pseuds/headlesshorsepossum). 



> PLEASE NOTE: this oneshot contains a fairly graphic description of a suicide attempt. Please be careful and gentle with yourself and don't read it if that's likely to trigger you.
> 
> This takes place about three years before Cafe itself does, so Kent is 17, Sol is 19, and Pax is about 21.
> 
> TW for: suicide attempt, gore, implied parental abuse, drowning, mild internalized ableism, underage whumpee.

Sol Michaelis has two soulmate marks instead of one—an eye with a slash through it sits just under his collarbone from the day he’s born, and then when he’s two a second one slowly filters in, twin patterns of three lines around each of his wrists, just above the veins, in delicate summer-sky blue.

To be honest, Sol doesn’t think about it that much. He’s got too much to do, always—he’s in every sports club where they’ll let him play on the right team, and he always has to force himself to study if he wants to do good in school; he doesn’t tell anyone because his dad’s a genius so he can’t let anyone know he’s stupid, but it takes him three times as long to do anything as he knows its supposed to, always. It doesn’t leave any time to think.

About three times a month, he has nightmares about drowning, where he braces his hands and tries to push up out of the water but there’s a big hand around the back of his head and it holds him under, and he wakes up gasping for breath, pinned down against his sweaty pillow by the feeling that it’s his fault, that he deserves it somehow, that it’s only justice.

He honestly believes they’re just normal stress dreams, and they usually don’t stick in his head that long. And he’s always so _busy._ He’s busy in high school and then all of a sudden he’s busy surviving instead, busy finding jobs he hates and doing them as many hours as he can, and just barely making rent and food money, and he really doesn’t have time to think about soulmates.

And then in the middle of a workday he drops an entire tray of dishes because his wrists are on fire.

—-

With the caveat that they have never met, Pax Field sometimes resents their future soulmates.

There’s a specific flavor to feelings when they aren’t yours—you’re not quite feeling them, you just know they’re happening, in some room and brain you aren’t actually a part of. But you can’t ignore them, either, no matter how much you try. And Pax always tries. Their own feelings are plenty without worrying about the feelings of absolute strangers, thank you very much. And they’re never _good_ feelings, or at least hardly ever; always cold prickly sorrow-embarrassment-shame around their wrists and hot itchy anxiety-fear-loneliness over their heart.

Occasionally at night, when Vic is out doing unethical science or whatever and they’re alone, they put their hand over their heart and rub the skin there, or they massage their wrists as softly as they can, and try to— _feel outward,_ which they’re not sure is even possible; whisper into the skin of their wrists that this stranger should fucking relax, fucking lighten up a little. Once they woke up from a nightmare—unrelated to soulmates, presumably, since it prominently featured Vic—and rolled over onto their stomach so they could press both wrists against their heart and bury their face in their pillow and cried, hard, because they didn’t know what was happening but they knew it wasn’t fair and they also knew there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Then they woke up in the morning and did their absolute best to forget about it, because they don’t _know_ these people and anyway they aren’t going to waste their time on things they can’t change.

But they’ve never felt anything like this.

It’s a Friday evening and they are, by the grace of god, alone in their apartment, which means no one has to see them stagger and then fall hard onto their knees in the middle of the hallway, staring at their wrists.

The little blue marks there don’t look any different, which seems insane, because they have never ever been more sure that something is wrong.

It isn’t like being in pain—it isn’t like being in their own pain. It’s like seeing a car accident on the news and hearing your phone ring at the same time and knowing you can’t get there fast enough, but you run out the door anyway, because you can’t do anything else, you can’t do this, you can’t lose him, _he can’t do this._

Even though Pax knows while they run into the bathroom, slipping and sliding on nothing and having to catch themself against walls and doors, that whoever “he” is, he already has.

They saw this in a movie once, where someone had to warn their soulmate about a murderer or some fucking dumb thing. So it probably doesn’t even work, and their soulmate’s going to bleed to death on expensive bathroom tiles before Pax even gets to meet him.

But they can’t not do _anything._ They turn the shower all the way to hot, and the sink all the way hot too, and they close the bathroom door behind them and stuff a towel underneath—and the bathroom mirror _still_ isn’t fogging up quick enough, so they breath on it, hard, too, even though that’s objectively dumb. Then they stand at the sink, staring at their own wild-eyed reflection as it fogs out, one hand clamped white-knuckled around the opposite wrist, which burns with pain that’s so much worse for not being theirs.

—-

It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore, actually.

Well, it does—it stings like a really terrible papercut, except much deeper and almost the whole length of his forearm. But it’s getting easier to ignore, even when he makes fists and squeezes to make the blood come out faster.

Kent kind of thinks, at least based on the movies he’s seen, that you’re supposed to strip naked before you do this, and he knows that would make the least mess. But he’s in the bathtub, and he’s stripped down to his boxers and a t-shirt, so it shouldn’t be too hard to clean up, anyway. And the maids are mostly older ladies, or young ones working through college, and stuff, and he’s too embarrassed to let them see him naked, even if he never has to know about it. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bathtub, with his hands in his lap, so the bottom of his boxers are getting wet and sticky, but that’s getting easier to ignore, too. The blood is bright against the white porcelain, by far the most he’s ever seen, and it’s hard to look away from. Kind of pretty, even.

His heart is going a little faster, now, and he thinks he might be sweating. He squeezes his fists again. It’s taking longer than he thought it would.

Maybe he should make another—

_People are looking at him._

Kent sits bolt upright, looking around the empty bathroom. He has a sudden urge to hide his arms behind his back, and he thinks he can feel an embarrassed flush in his cheeks.

“I-I,” he says, like he’s going to try to explain, even though he has no idea what he would say.

“Oh, god,” the brown-skinned boy with the round face and black hair says. He’s on the floor in the middle of a big kitchen. There are people around him but Kent can’t see them as well. It isn’t like looking through a window, or like the boy is here with him; it’s simply the new experience of seeing clearly into a room he is not in.

“Call for help,” the darker-skinned person says. Their hair is long and lose around their shoulders in tight waves. It’s dyed a violent pink. They’re staring into their bathroom mirror with more intensity than Kent has ever been looked at with, and they must be _mad_ at him; he grabs one of his wrists and squeezes it with his other hand, makes blood bubble out and gush over his hand and onto his leg.

 _“Fuck,”_ the black-haired boy screams. He’s kneeling in front of a metal dishwasher with a foggy reflective surface and he throws himself towards it, grabs the sides of the dishwasher with both hands. _“Don’t!”_

Kent loosens his grip, panting. He’s staring straight ahead, seeing the blank tile wall of his own bathroom and the industrial kitchen behind the black-haired boy and the bathroom behind the person with pink hair. His heart is pounding now, rabbit-fast, in a way that’s starting to feel scary.

“Don’t do that, baby,” the black-haired boy says, and his voice is shaking like he’s in pain, even though Kent knows, somehow, that he can’t be, that Kent would know if he was hurting.

“Who’s in the house with you?” the pink-hair-person barks, and Kent shakes his head, because his father is home but his father _can’t_ see him like this, he can’t, he’ll make sure Kent doesn’t die so he can drown him himself. _“Call for help!”_

Kent shakes his head again, harder, trying to scoot back away from them, except they aren’t really here so there’s nowhere to go.

He’s lifted his arms, now, holding one wrist in the hand, and now there’s blood down both his forearms and slick on his legs, soaking into his boxers and the bottom of his t-shirt, and he’s—beyond embarrassed, _scared,_ doesn’t want them to see this, doesn’t want _anyone_ to see it.

Kent doesn’t think of the golden sun that’s always sat on his chest, over his heart, and he doesn’t think of the smaller slashed eye beside it, because he is not thinking of much at all, but he’s always been glad they were easy to hide under his clothes. Not because he was ashamed of them, but because if no one else saw them they were his and nobody else’s. Sometimes those marks are the only parts of his body he likes, the only parts he never wants to hurt.

Both marks are warm, now, but the rest of him is becoming cold so fast that Kent doesn’t notice.

 _“Oh, god,”_ the black-haired boy’s voice says again. He hits his fist lightly against the dishwasher, like he wishes he could come through it, and Kent stares at him, because he’s lovely, and he’s sad, and it’s _Kent’s fault._

“I-I—” he says quietly. “I’m _sorry.”_

“God _damn_ it,” the pink-haired person says, and their voice is wild, almost a roar. Then they say, “Where are you?”

Kent shakes his head. “I—I don’t—”

“Are you in the city?” they snap. Their hands are braced on the bathroom sink, and they’re lovely too, and Kent didn’t mean—he didn’t think— “Hey!” they snap their fingers, eyes blazing, and Kent crashes back to earth with a start. _“Are you in the city?”_

Kent nods helplessly.

_“Where?”_

Kent blinks rapidly. Their eyes are so bright that he mumbles an answer before he’s even decided if he wants them to know or not.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” they say, diving for the pocket of their sweatpants.

“That’s near me,” the black-haired boy whispers. “That’s near me, that’s _near me,_ I’m coming to _get you!”_

Kent balks, scooting back in the blood along the bottom of the bathtub, shaking his head rapidly. “You—you _can’t,”_ he says, and then his mind goes blank with terror, because more than not wanting to be seen in bloody boxer shorts, _“My father is home!”_

—-

Sol only kind of hears this, because he’s already scrambling to his feet and wrestling his apron off over his head.

“You can’t just run off in the middle of your shift—” his boss starts, and then cuts off because Sol’s apron has just hit him in the chest.

 _“Then fire me,”_ Sol says, and he takes off across the restaurant floor at a dead run.

The address is ten or eleven blocks away—the restaurant where Sol works is right at the edge of the fancy part of town, and the blue-eyed boy’s house is in the heart of it. Sol doesn’t have a car, but it makes objective sense to wait for a bus or run to the train station. He does not consider this for even a second.

Sol runs, hard, his work shoes pounding on the pavement in time with his breath, and it doesn’t occur to him that it’s a summer night, still hot, or that he’s wearing his binder, or that the sidewalk is crowded with strangers who yell and dart out of his way. He doesn’t see any of them, doesn’t feel his ribs aching, doesn’t feel anything except that the blue lines on his wrist are pulsing—warm one second, like he’s going the right way, and cold the next, because his soulmate is dying.

Sol is drenched in sweat by the time he grinds to a stop in front of the tall fancy apartment building—and he knows immediately which one it is, because there’s an ambulance parked out front with it’s lights flashing.

Sol rounds the side of the ambulance and the stretcher is halfway in, and he stumbles sideways and almost falls—but he can feel the warm pulse in his mark and the boy on the stretcher gasps and moves, arching his back slightly.

The EMT about to shut the ambulance door turns at the sound of Sol’s pounding footsteps, looking alarmed, and Sol raises his arm and waves it over his head.

 _“He’s my soulmate!”_ He pants, holding his arm out so the EMT can see the mark, pulsing and flickering in a way that makes panic burn the back of Sol’s neck, but definitely giving off a soft glow. “He’s my soulmate. We’re soulmates.”

The EMT frowns, and then opens the door back up and lets him clamber inside.

Sol’s never been inside an ambulance before; it’s cramped, with two EMTs hovering on either side of the stretcher, now staring at Sol, but Sol barely sees them because the boy on the stretcher is looking at him too, and there’s blood everywhere—they’ve put tourniquets around his arms, but only just now—and Sol _loves_ him.

Sol holds up his arm, still panting, hard. The paramedic on the boy’s left frowns at him, then down at the boy, and then tugs the collar of his t-shirt down.

There’s a big yellow sun over the boy’s chest, glowing bright and steady, like it’s mocking the weak stutter-pulse of the glow at Sol’s wrists. Sol flushes, feeling almost embarrassed, like his mark is showing off.

The EMT sighs and gestures for Sol to sit down.

The boy on the stretcher gives a little gasp. His eyes follow Sol when he awkwardly arranges himself on the little bench next to the stretcher, bright blue and reflective as glass. The EMT on his right leans over to scribble something across the boy’s forehead with a black marker—“TK” and the time—and the boy blinks at Sol around the EMT’s arm, his lips slightly parted.

“Hey,” Sol says softly. He wants badly to take the boy’s hand, but it’s covered in blood and he’s worried he’ll hut him. He pats his knee awkwardly instead, and the boy gasps again, sounding punched-out and rough but not _pained,_ exactly. “My name’s Sol. I’m one of your soulmates.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy whispers, staring at Sol, and it sinks into Sol’s belly like a punch, and he gasps, hard, because he can _feel_ it, not like it’s his own but still so strong he can taste it: shame and guilt and heart-fluttering panic.

Sol folds forward, the wind knocked out of him, and lowers his head to touch his forehead, as gently as he can, to the back of his soulmate’s bloody hand.

“I’m not mad at you,” Sol whispers, and he hears the boy gasp again, his breath starting to come in hard quiet sobs. “I’m not mad, baby, I’m not mad, I’m not mad, I’m not mad.”

\----

It is pure miracle that Pax doesn’t get pulled over, especially because this is Vic’s car they very much did not ask permission to borrow. They swing it into the hospital parking garage, park very badly, and throw themselves out.

They have no real way of knowing that he’s even here, except that the marks on their wrists are warmer than they were. And this is the hospital nearest the address they were given. And if they aren’t actively going _somewhere_ they’re gonna explode.

They get to the front desk before they realize they have no idea what name to ask for. And also they’re wearing a tank top and sweatpants with their hair tied up in a very messy topknot, and they think they must be visibly out of breath from sprinting up from the bottom level of the car park.

“Name?” the receptionist says, giving them a skeptical once over that they’re sure will really piss them off in about twelve hours when there’s room in their head for that kind of thing.

They shake their head, folding over with their hands on their knees to catch their breath, and before they can really breathe again, they sort of vaguely raise their wrist at her—even though it isn’t glowing yet and she can’t see it pulsing with heat—and mutters, “Soulmate—here for— _soulmate.”_

The receptionist raises her eyebrows, but she obediently clicks something on the desk computer. “You have their name?”

“No,” they say. “He’s here for—he—” They can’t say it out loud, even though it should be easy, they _don’t even know him._ “It’s, we’re a triad, the other one, the other guy’s already here.” Probably. Hopefully.

The receptionist frowns at them, then shrugs and types god-knows-what into her computer. _Idiot confirms astral soulmate projection and doesn’t think to get their fucking numbers,_ presumably.

Then her frown deepens, and Pax’s heart drops into their stomach, and all they can see is oceans of blood on the floor of the tub.

“We’ve got a member of a triad here, with a note that the third might be coming. But it—looks like that patient’s still in surgery.” She looks up at Pax with sympathy that immediately makes them nauseous. “He won’t be seeing anyone right now.”

“The other one,” Pax croaks, blinking hard. This is the part where they roll their eyes and make a joke and tell her obviously they knew that where should they wait, except they don’t remember how. “Where can I—is he here? I want to see him.”

The woman’s giving them big pitying eyes now, which they don’t think has happened once in their adult life, and they hate it, they’ve never hated anything more, they want to be alone or to have someone punch them in the face or to not have seen blood all over their soulmate’s arms and shirt and lap. “He should be in the surgical waiting room, honey,” she says, and probably she would try and pat their hand like a grandma if there wasn’t a desk in the way. She points to her left. “Follow the blue signs to the end of the hall.”

They turn mechanically and start walking, not hearing whatever encouragement or condolences the receptionist tries to call after them.

—-

Sol doesn’t even know if anyone else is in the waiting room with him because he can’t look at anything except his own wrists, where the rings are glowing fainter but still that same pretty pale blue.

 _It’s normal for the initial glow to fade after the first few hours,_ an orderly's told him, and it’s something he already knows, _should_ already know, _definitely_ needed to be reminded of. As long as the mark doesn’t gray out, as long as it’s still in color, he doesn’t need to panic.

But a big part of him wants to panic anyway, so he’s staring at his wrists and nothing else, watching the lines around them—still blue and still blue and still blue—pulse slowly. He tries to time his breath to match them. There’s no reason to think his soulmate is doing the same but it—feels good, feels right, feels like he can make the boy keep breathing if he tries hard enough, even though he knows that’s stupid.

His soulmate’s name is Chaucer Kenton Graves. He’s seventeen. He isn’t dead and Sol is going to keep it that way through force of will alone if he has to.

He’s staring and breathing and _willing_ so hard he doesn’t even notice the growing warmth below his collarbone until the door of the waiting room slides open and he looks up and sees the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, standing there in the doorway staring at him looking absolutely gobsmacked.

They’re tall, wearing a rainbow-striped tank and sweats, their brown arms corded with wiry muscle, and their face is all cheekbones and smudged makeup, wide dark-hazel eyes taking Sol in with their pupils blown wide, and he’s seen them before of course but seeing them in person is something _entirely different._

“You’re the sun,” the person says in an awed hushed voice, not moving from the doorway.

Sol swallows hard around a lump in his throat and realizes with mild horror that his eyes are wet. And then that his breath is speeding up and he can’t stop it.

“Fuck!” the beautiful person says, and they lurch forward to catch Sol before he tumbles forward out of the awful waiting room chair.

And now Sol is kind of on the floor but mostly in his soulmate’s lap, with his hands wrapped around their warm solid chest and grasping desperately at the back of their tank top while his face is buried in the front, in the crook between their shoulder and neck, sobbing and then wailing and then screaming tears and snot into their shirt and the soft warmth of their skin even though he has _not yet said a word to them._

By the grace of god they gather him in immediately, strong arms around his shoulders and waist, squeezing almost at tight as he is, and cup the back of his head in their hand and mutter into his hair in a shaky voice, “Shit, fuck, Christ, I’ve got you, honey it’s okay I’ve got you.”

They sit there on the floor and let Sol hang off them like a baby monkey until he’s hiccupping into their shoulder instead of howling, scratching their dull nails up and down his back and breathing a little hard themself.

“I’m, uh.” They clear their throat, their voice still sounding a bit shaky. “I’m Pax, by the way.”

“Uh,” Sol says, and awkwardly unwraps himself from around his soulmate’s neck. They’re looking at him, still, with wide eyes, and he feels his face heat up immediately. “I’m—I’m Sol. Hi.”

“Have you seen him?” they say, keeping their hand on Sol’s shoulder, which is good because it means he won’t spin off into space, though the skin underneath feels hot and tingly in a way he doesn’t think has anything to do with magic.

Sol shakes his head numbly.

“You know his name?” Their eyes are like they were when Sol half-saw them through their bathroom mirror, blazing, almost too intense.

Sol nods, licking his lips to try and force feeling back into them, and croaks, “Graves. Chaucer Kenton.” Like he’s filling out a form. He shakes his head again like maybe that will get his brain working again, which it never has before.

“Like Senator Graves?” Pax says, frowning. “Did you see his family?”

Sol shakes his head again. His tongue and lips feel like they’re moving on their own without his permission so he’s relieved that what comes out is a semi coherent, “No, nobody was out there, they were gonna put him in the ambulance alone.” Then he grabs Pax’s tank again without realizing he’s going to. “They were gonna put him in alone.”

His soulmate is still looking at him, in a way nobody looks at him, and they wrap their hand around Sol’s where he’s grabbing their shirt and can’t make himself let go. “But you got there in time, right?”

Sol nods eagerly. “I saw him, and they let me in the ambulance and I, I couldn’t hold his hand because—” He can’t finish that, laughs hysterically, keeps babbling. “But he saw me, he knew I was there.”

“He wasn’t alone,” Pax says, nodding, like they know that’s important too. They still have one hand on Sol’s shoulder and the other wrapped around his wrist. And Sol’s hand is spread over their heart now, where he knows his mark on them must be, but if he thinks about that too hard he’s going to cry again. “That’s good. That’s good, you did good, we—we did good.”

Pax looks down at their hand, wrapped around Sol’s wrist. The blue lines on Sol’s wrists are still pulsing with light. Pax’s aren’t, but they’re the same shade of blue Sol’s been seeing there for as long as he can remember, and looking at them like that, side by side, almost makes him light-headed.

“Still blue,” Pax says, following his gaze, like they’re reassuring themself, and Sol nods, looking at his wrist and his soulmate’s right next to it, matching blue lines on different shades of brown skin. “There’s still three of us.”

“Still blue,” he repeats, closing his eyes, and he knows he loves Pax too because they let him close his eyes and lean forward till his forehead hits their shoulder, and they slide their hand back in his hair like they know that’s exactly what he needs. He grips his wrist in the opposite hand, and then he presses his pulse point against his shoulder, under his collarbone, where Pax’s slash-eye mark must be glowing under his work shirt. Both marks are warm now, and he can feel himself getting teary-eyed again. “Still blue,” he whispers into Pax’s shirt.

—-

Pax hates the idea of destiny. They always have, ever since they were small they’ve had the urge to respond to “when you meet your soulmate it’s like nothing else in the world” with “don’t fucking tell me what to do.” They’ve always had—sort of complicated feelings about their own personal marks, something painful that digs in deeper every time they feel the people they’re supposed to love in pain and can’t do jack shit to stop it. Which is—which is almost every fucking day so by the time they’re an adult it’s dug in deep enough they can pretend it’s resentment, rejection of the very idea, and that’s much easier.

At the moment they hate soulmates even more, because when the nurse finally lets them into the recovery room and they see Chaucer Kenton Graves in his hospital bed they fall all the way fucking over again.

Sol cries out, because of course it’s best if all three of them are suffering, naturally, and drops to his knees next to them. He’s at least already seen the kid, so he’s apparently got the bandwidth to worry about Pax, who waves him away, covering their face with their other hand, because they need _no one to look at them_ for the next five minutes.

They can see the blue glow from their wrist through their closed eyelids, but they don’t need it, it’s information they already know.

Chaucer Kenton Graves is seventeen and looks it, and he isn’t dead but not for lack of trying.

“He should be coming around in the next few minutes,” the nurse says. She seems to be studiously ignoring the fact that Pax is still on their knees on the floor trying to catch they’re breath, which means she is their new favorite person. They can see Sol hovering between them and the hospital bed, though mercifully only his legs and feet are visible from Pax’s current on-the-floor-with-their-head-bowed position. There’s blood on the knee of his dress pants. Pax didn’t see it before because the pants are black but now they can and—

“Oh, _fuck,”_ they moan, and throw themselves to their feet so they can run into the little attached bathroom and collapse in front of the toilet.

This is so fucking stupid. They fucking—they _fight people_ for a _living,_ they’ve _seen blood_ before—

Logic in no way keeps them from heaving the remains of their microwaved dinner into this hospital toilet. Go fucking figure.

They shrug the hesitant hand off their shoulder harsher than they need to, through force of habit more than anything else, but Sol doesn’t wince. He gives them a second of space and then slides his hand up their sweaty forehead to smooth back the three long spirals of pink hair that have slipped out of their haphazard bun. His hand is warm and steady.

It’s—it’s, uh—it breaks Pax’s fucking heart.

Pax lowers their head to rest it against the front of the toilet, which is a semi-public toilet and presumably gross as fuck but at least the porcelain is cold against their forehead. They squeeze their eyes closed and try very hard to remember how to breathe.

Sol’s hand comes to rest on the back of their head, and its warm weight makes their breath hitch on the way out.

“Where’s, uh,” they croak, without sitting up or opening their eyes. “Is the nurse—what did she—”

“She’s gone,” Sol says. His voice is—fucking, _sorrowful_ in a way that makes Pax’s stomach hurt, but it’s steady, too. “She says they’ll have to check his, um, his cognitive functions when he wakes up, but we can, uh—we can have the room for now.”

“Oh, joy,” Pax says, and scrapes themself back up into an actual sitting position. They take a big deep breath before they open their eyes and look at Sol, who’s big brown eyes are bright and side but seem mostly dry. “Did you get to talk to him, in the—before?”

“Yeah,” Sol says softly, sitting back on his heels and hunching in on himself. He’s younger than Pax, too, though maybe not as young as the sewn-together boy in the hospital bed. “He, uh.” Sol clears his throat roughly, looking away. “He said he was sorry.”

Pax laughs once, bitterly. “Ha! He fucking should be,” they say hotly, and Sol looks back at them immediately, not even reproachful but _upset;_ Pax wants to throw up again.

“Don’t,” Sol says, and his hand darts out and grabs the collar of Pax’s tank, and it isn’t even a threat, it’s like he needs something to hold onto; this is the worst day of Pax’s life. “Don’t you dare say that in front of him,” Sol says, and his voice is higher, like he’s just barely holding it together. “He wasn’t even—he didn’t even mean _this,”_ Sol says, waving his hand at the bathroom and the recovery room beyond it. “He meant, fucking—‘sorry you’re stuck with me’. He probably thinks he was doing us a _favor.”_

Pax winces, feeling another sharp stab of nausea. “Fuck,” they mutter. Sol is looking at them with his big eyes wide—angry on the surface and almost pleading underneath. “I won’t, man,” Pax says quietly, taking hold of his wrist where he’s still holding their shirt. His hand is shaking. “I wasn’t gonna.” They stare at Sol—who’s _also_ a kid, even if they can’t be more than a year or two younger than Pax, who’s holding it together than Pax feels like they are but just barely, and they’re about to reach for him when they catch a quiet gasp from the main room, right at the edge of their hearing. Sol blinks at them, wide-eyed, and they both scramble to their feet, using the sink and each other for support.

Chaucer Kenton Graves blinks owlishly at them, clearly still very anesthetized. But his eyes are open, and he’s breathing in little sighs, like a sleepy puppy, and—

And _oh no,_ Pax thinks, sinking into a chair next to the bed and putting their hand on the boy’s shoulder because they literally can’t do anything else. Sol reaches for their other hand, and they let him, and Pax still hates destiny, hates it even more now.

But goddammit. If destiny gave them these idiots. They’ll burn it all down before they ever let destiny take them back.


End file.
